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Aled Roberts was barred for being a member of the Valuation Tribunal for Wales

Assembly Members are due to vote to decide the fate of a Liberal Democrat barred from the Welsh assembly after May's election.

Aled Roberts, who was elected a North Wales AM, fell victim to out-of-date candidate guidance and disqualified.

The watchdog body the Electoral Commission has apologised to him.

Fellow Lib Dem John Dixon was also disqualified at the same time but will not regain his seat after his party withdrew a motion to reinstate him.

Mr Roberts was barred from the assembly for being a member of the Valuation Tribunal for Wales, a body to which AMs cannot legally belong.

Assembly standards commissioner Gerard Elias QC blamed the Electoral Commission for failing to update its Welsh language website to include the tribunal on the list of organisations to which AMs cannot belong.

'Mistakes made'

Although the English language guidance was up-to-date, the Welsh language version pointed Mr Roberts towards regulations from 2006. They were replaced by a new order in 2010.

Analysis

Some members, having seen Gerard Elias's report into the whole situation, perhaps wanted a little longer to consider what to do. But it looks as if the vote to save Aled Roberts's skin is going ahead.

Gerard Elias didn't make any recommendations but he doesn't really hedge his bets either in this report. Perhaps the fact that the Liberal Democrats cut John Dixon adrift is a sign that they recognise that too.

He is pretty blunt. What he does do, however, is confirm Aled Roberts's version of events which is that as a native Welsh speaker from north Wales he had done all his communication in Welsh. He had gone to the Welsh website, there was a mistake there and that has been confirmed.

Mr Elias said he was entitled to expect that the information there was right so he seems to accept that. But the question is do assembly members accept that?

It really isn't a done deal. AMs have read the report but they still have questions to ask.

What some AMs were saying last night was... having read the report, the only way you can justify not supporting Aled Roberts is for political and party political reasons. If he does make it, it will be because of some abstentions.

The report found Mr Roberts "did everything that he could have reasonably been expected to do in ensuring that he was not a disqualified person for the purpose of nomination or election to the national assembly".

In a statement, the commission said "there were mistakes made" in its guidance for candidates.

It said: "We regret and apologise for this very rare error and have reviewed our internal processes to ensure such an error does not occur in future."

It added that the Welsh Government did not formally tell it that the rules had been updated.